The concepts of “Intelligent Networks” and “Advanced Intelligent Network” are known as involving an architecture to implement services such as intelligent call routing on a public telephony network. This technology comprises basically a routing database coupled in a quite direct manner to the telephone network. However, these services are mostly limited to voice telephony and have little or no interaction with the user's information systems.
There are also known so-called “Web Intelligent Networks” which have the purpose of solving some of the disadvantages of the classical intelligent network architecture by affording greater interactivity. It allows interaction between a subscriber's information system and a service control point (SCP) of an intelligent network via the Internet. By means of such interaction, the subscriber has control over the service execution. (see “Integrating the Intelligent Network and the Internet”, O'Connell et al, ICIN 96).
Further, so-called computer telephony integration (CTI) technologies offer a wide range of solutions to integrate telephony with computers. CTI applications are numerous and include call-centers, unified messaging (basically text messages available together with voice messages through a single interface), interactive voice response systems, voice browsing systems, automatic call distribution, real time data fetch according to caller identification etc. However all standard CTI solutions are operated on customer premises equipment (CPE). Therefore, they require the subscriber to connect their computer equipment to the telephone network via PBXs or via special telephony interface cards.
A major drawback of such CTI applications is that the function of flexible call routing permitted by the intelligent network technologies is not available when such applications are CPE-based. The reason is that CTI processing is always done after the call has been delivered by the network.
Another known technology is the so-called network or virtual call centers, which provide network-based CTI solutions for call centers. Such technology allows the subscriber to globally control the routing functions of the network (including automatic call distribution) e.g. for routing calls among different sites of the subscriber.
Still another prior art is constituted by a tentative project by a consortium named “Parlay” (See parlay white papers at the Internet address www.parlay.org). Such project defines programming interfaces to implement services that control the network behavior. Such interfaces have the purpose of allowing to control the network behavior from software located in the subscriber's information system. However, this Parlay project only defines a programmatic API (Application Programming Interface, and implies that a suitable pre-existing intelligent network infrastructure is available that is capable of providing gateways between the network and the subscriber information system.